An open container, such as a dish, bowl, bucket, tank, and the like, can serve as a simple and inexpensive animal watering device. While the simplicity and inexpensiveness are highly desirable features, open containers often pose problems to persons wishing to provide water for animals, such as pet dogs. An open water container promotes messes which may be particularly undesirable when they occur inside a house, and an open water container promotes water waste through contamination, dripping, evaporation, and the like.
When animals are particularly hot and thirsty, they may drink too much water too fast from an open container and get sick. Often times, animals like to put their feet, if not their entire bodies, in an open water container. This activity dirties the water from contaminants on the animal's feet, legs, and body. Then, after the animal withdraws from the open container it generally makes a mess as water drips or is shaken off the animal. Even if the animal does not step in its water, it often enjoys gulping water in a manner which leads to a mess from excessive drooling and water dripping off hair around the animal's mouth. Moreover, open water containers provide an opportunity for other animals to foul the water or other contaminants to be blown or otherwise fall into the water.
Feeding devices which are intended to dispense liquid feed or feed supplements from covered containers are known in the art. While such devices adequately attend to the needs of feed and supplement dispensing, they do not solve the problems associated with watering animals. For example, such devices typically dispense highly viscous liquid feeds or feed supplements in very limited quantities. The liquid feed or feed supplement is dispensed using a wheel with a smooth surface which rotates as an animal licks it. The wheel rotates down into a covered container where a small quantity of feed or feed supplement adheres to the wheel's surface. Continued rotation causes the wheel to elevate the small quantity of feed or feed supplement that adheres to the wheel's surface above the container's cover where it may be consumed by the animal.
Liquid feed and liquid feed supplement dispensers of this type fail to meet the needs of an animal waterer. Since water is a low viscosity liquid, only trace amounts of water can be elevated above a container's cover using these feeders. Consequently, an animal needing or wishing to get a drink must spend a considerable amount of time licking the wheel in order to obtain refreshment. Excessive licking of a wheel is highly undesirable. It is desirable to treat animals humanely, but allowing an animal to obtain only trace amounts of water with each lick induces frustration in the animal. In addition, excessive licking of a wheel generates excessive noise, which is a nuisance particularly when the watering device is located in a house. Moreover, excessive licking imposes excessive wear and tear on the moving parts of the feeder and limits the useful life of the feeder. Furthermore, the difficulty associated with obtaining refreshment as caused by allowing an animal to obtain only trace amounts of water with each lick encourages the animal to seek easier sources of water. When an animal is in a house, such other sources of water are often open toilets, which suffer from the drawbacks of open water containers plus an additional element of disgust on the part of human house occupants.